Irish lad living in Boston

Where’s my bag? I can’t find my bag. Everyone has left the baggage area. My bag is lost. I want to go home. I’ll just go back on the plane and go home. How did I handle this predicament? I did the only thing that any man would do in the same situation. I whistled and walked around the baggage area to ensure people wouldn’t notice my panic.

Sweat seeped through my new winter coat (tog value 897), as I desperately tried to picture what my bag looked like. I put on my ‘someone has delayed me I’m not lost or afraid’ face and did a lot of tutting and pfff’ing. My luck changed for the better when everyone else had gone out to meet their loved ones. In the end, it was an easy decision between a wheelchair and the only suitcase left. With my eyes crossed and my tongue resting on my chin, I wheeled my way out of the baggage area.

Surprisingly, there happened to be a person waiting for me on the other side. My good friend Angelo, holding a sign that read ‘My sexy, best friend Derek’, had come to pick me up from the airport. Angelo is a 6ft Italian constructed from bronze and brick but mostly brick. I had met Angelo a few years ago when he spent a week or so at the same university of excellence as myself. Ever since then he has been my Italian friend who ‘likes’ all my comments on Facebook. Thinking about it now, maybe it was a little creepy that he knew my flight time, flight number, beach-thong size, terminal and the airport I was flying into. Great gift though.

He carried my bag to his car and insisted I go for a drink with him. Angelo took me to an Irish bar called Hennessy’s in the middle of Boston. You have to watch out for pubs that have the same name as the drinks they sell. It’s a red flag that you need to take notice of. You wouldn’t walk into a place called Donald’s Drug Emporium or Henry Heroin’s would you? Obviously the people addicted to heroin would. It would no doubt result in a lot of revenue for the bar itself. And if they decided to put a cover charge at the door it would almost certainly ensure a hefty financial windfall for the bar every night.

Unfortunately, a pub that sells heroin would have impossibly high insurance costs with all the syringes, aids and hepatitis hanging around the place. It would also be difficult for the staff to tell the patrons that they have had enough heroin for the day or that its closing time without causing major upset in the bar. Tabs might be difficult to settle too. I just don’t think a heroin pub would be financially viable. It’s a stupid idea. Terrible concept.

I entered the bar and made a promise to myself right there and then. I had traveled too far and been put through too much. It was time to drink the entire contents of this bar and demonstrate every Irish stereotype to all the American onlookers. I strutted up to the bar and ordered more or less all of the drinks that sat up on the shelf behind the bar tender. All of them teasing me with their liquid bellies. Shaking and wobbling themselves closer and closer to me. Eagerly anticipating their role in my transformation from man to beast.